The tricks to manipulating TV news were exposed by an angry U.S. Information Agency video expert in his 1976 book, 'The Gods of Antenna.'

Ironically, this book by an award-winning US government propaganda expert, Bruce Herschensohn, helps us better understand the most valuable of the CIA's 'family jewels' revealed to the Church Senate sub-committee in 1975 by CIA Director, William Colby, the Central Intelligence Agency's control of mainstream media news used to manage public opinion and appropriately called 'Operation Mockingbird.'

Sometimes when factions within the secret government duel, we find out how they work.Both the Pentagon and CIA wanted to get policy control back from Nixon.Nixon was also emotionally unstable and drinking.

According to Anthony Summers' 2000 biography of Nixon called 'The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon,' the unstable president was prone to ordering air strikes and threatening nuclear retaliation often enough to have to be carefully buffered by insiders who knew his foibles.

Instead of getting shot like JFK, Nixon was made to walk the media plank towards impeachment and then resigned the day after GHW Bush told him to, not wanting that crossfire of hot lead used to overcome other 'political obstacles.'

Watergate hearings revived the myth of 'the rule of law in a system that works' and the outraged masses (recently called by Barak Obama "the excesses of the sixties") were placated by Nixon's removal. This enabled the Reagan cocaine-death squad years as 'investigative journalism' was stuffed back into its bottle by blaming it for losing the Vietnam War, the same 'stab in the back' psy-ops that helped the rise of Hitler.

Bruce Herschensohn saw all his own professional tricks being used by the CIA's network news writers and angrily let the psy-ops cat out of the bag himself, right into our hands, the hands of the 'outraged masses.' Live and learn.

From Herschensohn's book on page 68-"For years, film and video techniques were used only to enhance the productions for audiences that wished to be entertained; therefore, those techniques deserved to be as guarded as a magician's hat. But those techniques were being used, and at the writing are still being used, to enhance distortion for audiences that wish to be informed. As in the days of varityped contracts, the fine print of television is more important than the bold print, but too often it passes unnoticed, just as it is intended to do."

After citing tactics used by Nazi propaganda master, Joseph Goebbels, such as "the list" technique of piling on charges so that some inevitably stick in the public's mind, Herschensohn gives us hints about the CIA's Operation Mockingbird by paying an insider's clever tribute to the musical nick-names for both major Cold War propaganda organizations, the Soviet KGB’s 'Red Orchestra' and the American CIA's 'Mighty Wurlitzer.'

page 45-"The symphony was being conducted by network television, playing to the national audience for a year and a half. Its orchestration and performance were masterful. Its composer remained anonymous to most of the millions who watched as the musicians played their instruments almost flawlessly."

Bookjacket flap bio of author-

"Bruce Herschensohn was deputy special assistant to President Nixon in 1973-74, having first served as director of Motion Picture and Television Services of the United States Information Agency from 1968 through 1972.Born in Milwaukee in 1932, he spent his teen years in Los Angeles and went to work for RKO Radio Pictures in the early 1950s. After a stint with the Air Force during the Korean War, he returned to Hollywood and the motion picture industry as producer, director, writer, and editor. For eleven years he headed his own motion picture company.His film credits include the documentaries 'Years of Lightening, Day of Drums' and 'The Five Cities of June,' the latter nominated for an Academy Award in 1964. Under Herschensohn the USIA Film Division won an Academy Award and was nominated for five others. He was named one of the ten Outstanding Young Men in the Federal Government in 1969 and received the Distinguished Service Award in 1972, the second highest civilian honor."

U.S. taxpayers footed the bill for four police to man the event at the second appearance in Columbus, along with several other plain clothed officers and even Secret Service officials who, according to demonstrators, questioned Ron Paul supporters.Activists claimed that Beck's employees admitted Secret Service were chaperoning Beck, leading to charges that Beck is being directly bankrolled and protected by the government to spew his propaganda.

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."~ William Colby

As we have known for some time now, MEMRI, short for the Middle East Media Research Institute, specializes in disinformation by distorting translations of film and print media stories originating in Arabic, Iranian and Turkish media. In essence, what MEMRI does is change the context of news stories by way of mistranslation and excision. Call it MEMRI loss, the deliberate mangling of media. MEMRI did this to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by turning a speech he delivered in 2005 into a racist and genocidal screed. MEMRI accomplished this through mistranslation. Not a day passes now we do not witness corporate media claims Ahmadinejad wants to wipe Israel off the map. In fact, Ahmadinejad said the “regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history.” He did not say Israel must be wiped off the map. But this engineered lie is repeated constantly by the corporate media and to such a degree it is now accepted as fact.

CARACAS, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday CNN may have been instigating his murder when the U.S. TV network showed a photograph of him with a label underneath that read "Who killed him?"

Reports in the Dutch newspaper Trouw (2/21/00, 2/25/00) and France's Intelligence Newsletter (2/17/00) have revealed that several officers from the US Army's 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group at Ft. Bragg worked in the news division at CNN's Atlanta headquarters last year, starting in the final days of the Kosovo War.

The story is disturbing. In the 1980s, officers from the 4th Army PSYOPS group staffed the National Security Council's Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), a shadowy government propaganda agency that planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan Administration's Central America policies.

A senior US official described OPD as a "vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory." (Miami Herald, 7/19/87) An investigation by the congressional General Accounting Office found that OPD had engaged in "prohibited, covert propaganda activities," and the office was soon shut down as a result of the Iran-Contra investigations. But the 4th PSYOPS group still operates.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Let's get straight to CNN Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre, working a developing story for us.Of course, Jamie, it's the release of that videotape from 9/11 of that plane hitting the Pentagon. Haven't had a chance to see it. Of course a lot of conspiracy theories surfaced since not -- not being able to see that videotape. And now that might change.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, what we'll be seeing, Kyra, is a longer, more complete version of the images first broadcast by CNN back in March of 2002. This is video from a security camera that was at the corner of one of the entrances to the Pentagon that captured the plane hitting the side of the building.

Initially, we obtained only five still frames from that video, but now, after a lawsuit by the public interest group Judicial Watch, and the end of the Zacarias Moussaoui trial, the government is going to release the full, more complete video in which you'll see a little more clearly but perhaps still not enough to convince all conspiracy theorists the plane actually slamming into the side of the Pentagon, American Airlines Flight 77.

You can see it in these still images again that we broadcast originally back in 2002, but it's very indistinct. And that's helped fuel some of the conspiracy theories, people saying that perhaps a missile hit the Pentagon or that the Pentagon was destroyed by an explosion deliberately set by the U.S. government.

Of course, having been there on September 11th, having seen the plane wreckage and photographed it myself personally, I can tell you that that's nonsense. But nevertheless, those kinds of theories exist on the Internet. And one of the reasons that groups like Judicial Watch and CNN -- which, by the way, filed a freedom of information request for this back in 2002 -- have been wanting to get the full video out.http://thewebfairy.com/911/pentagon/

The TOPOFF 3 scenario will depict a complex terrorist campaign and drive the exercise play through the homeland security system, beginning in Connecticut and New Jersey, and leading to national and international response.

Over the course of several days fire personnel will conduct search and rescue, hospitals will treat the injured (played by role players), subject-matter experts will analyze the effects of the attack on public health, and top officials will deploy resources and make the difficult decisions needed to save lives.

An internal Virtual News Network (VNN) and news website will provide real-time reporting of the story like an actual TV network would. The mock media will keep players up-to-date on unfolding events and enable decision makers to face the challenge of dealing with the real world media. Only participating agencies can view the VNN broadcast.http://www.iwar.org.uk/news-archive/2005/03-17-07.htm

So who is Alexis Debat? His apparent institutional allegiance to the CIA naturally leads the observer to suspect a long-standing relationship with the Company. While researching this story, my thoughts drifted back to Philippe de Vosjoli, the French spook who was more-or-less "recruited" for American intelligence by the CIA's infamous JamesJesusAngleton. Alfred Hitchchock's worst movie, Topaz, tells a fictionalized version of this story; John Forsythe plays Angleton.

I don't know who Debat really is. But I'd like to learn more. The positioning of spooks within the journalistic community is a very serious matter.

The TOPOFF 3 scenario will depict a complex terrorist campaign and drive the exercise play through the homeland security system, beginning in Connecticut and New Jersey, and leading to national and international response.

Over the course of several days fire personnel will conduct search and rescue, hospitals will treat the injured (played by role players), subject-matter experts will analyze the effects of the attack on public health, and top officials will deploy resources and make the difficult decisions needed to save lives.

An internal Virtual News Network (VNN) and news website will provide real-time reporting of the story like an actual TV network would. The mock media will keep players up-to-date on unfolding events and enable decision makers to face the challenge of dealing with the real world media. Only participating agencies can view the VNN broadcast.http://www.iwar.org.uk/news-archive/2005/03-17-07.htm

Well, why not? Somebody's got to be the target. Putting random chance aside, there are several good reasons why Portland was chosen to host this year's main anti-terrorist event. We're told Portland's mayor and Oregon's governor actually requested that Portland be included in the exercises. I'm assuming those requests were made with one arm pinned behind their backs by an ex-pro wrestler turned spook who keeps raising the wrist just a tiny bit more.

In any case, the feds graciously honored the request and here they come, the honchos of the national security apparatus.

So why is Portland on the short list for a simulated nuclear terrorist attack on a major American city that may just "go live?" First, it's reachable by water, which preserves the old "suitcase nuke delivered by boat to a harbor near you" scenario we've all heard for years. Second, it's among the bluest of American coastal cities and, while San Francisco must present a tempting target, it's home to several major banks, insurance companies and other GOP infrastructure favorites. Third, LA and Seattle, a couple more anti-GOP cities with bull's-eyes on their civic centers, are too strategic to what's left of the economy. And fourth, Portland's kind of . . . disposable..

Vice President Cheney has taken a very prominent role in covert military operations and training exercises designed for the "seamless integration" of different national security and military authorities to possible terrorist attacks. On May 8, 2001, President Bush placed Mr. Cheney in charge of "[A]ll federal programs dealing with weapons of mass destruction, consequence management within the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Justice, and Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other federal agencies". LINK. Mr. Cheney subsequently played a direct role in supervising training exercises that simultaneously occurred during the 911 attacks..

The forthcoming September 14 U.S. Air Force report will likely describe the B-52 incident as an "error" and an "isolated incident" as foreshadowed in the September 6 Press Statement. This will create some difficulty in exposing the actual role played by Cheney and any other government figures that supported him. There will be a need for continued public awareness of the true events behind the B-52 incident in order to expose the actual role of Mr. Cheney. Only in that way can Cheney be held accountable for his actions, and other government figures that supported his neo-conservative agenda be exposed. Regardless of whether Cheney's role as the prime architect of the B-52 incident is exposed to the public, the official backlash against his covert operation should force his resignation. In either case, a very dangerous public official would be removed from a powerful position of influence. More importantly, the world has been spared a devastating nuclear war by courageous American airmen who revealed the true contents of an otherwise routine B-52 landing at Barksdale, AFB headed for a covert nuclear mission to the Middle East.

WASHINGTON--The US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has been caught conducting covert propaganda attacks on the internet. The attacks, exposed this week in a report by the government transparency group Wikileaks, include deleting detainee ID numbers from Wikipedia last month, the systematic posting of unattributed "self praise" comments on news organization web sites in response to negative press, boosting pro-Guantanamo stories on the internet news site Digg and even modifying Fidel Castro's encyclopedia article to describe the Cuban president as "an admitted transexual"..http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks_busts_Gitmo_propaganda_team/

The Times is without question an establishment newspaper; I always read the New York Times the way Sovietologists used to read Izvestia, the government newspaper, and I half-kiddingly always ask the question: is the New York Times playing the role of Izvestia or the role of Pravda, which was the party newspaper. The New York Times owes its success, its long-term success, economic and otherwise, to being close to the government, to being sort of the semiofficial government newspaper and giving the administration line to the public fairly unfiltered. And Michael Gordon is just a tool. He’s just a conduit for this policy that the paper has been pursuing for decades.

On May 11, 2007, Mort Sahl turned eighty. He was a pioneer in stand-up comedy. He broke through the tradition of jokes about airplane food, Asian drivers, booze and frigid wives, instead sharing his wit and insights about political hypocrisy, racism, marijuana laws and monogamy. I first met Sahl in 1953 when he was a guest speaker in a course I was taking at the New School for Social Research. I was inspired by his satirical approach to serious issues."Every word I do is improvised," he once told me. "I don't rehearse anything. I start it on stage."

In the beginning, though, he would write key words on a rolled-up newspaper, which became his trademark prop. In 1960 he wrote jokes for presidential candidate John Kennedy, and Sahl's picture graced the cover of Time magazine in August during the conventions. When Kennedy was killed in 1963, Sahl endangered his career and was blacklisted as a result of becoming an associate of New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison in his investigation of the JFK assassination..Paul Krassner: Mort Sahl's Punchline

"There have been many things swept under the carpet. And I think it's a shame in a government that you trust - I think it's a shame, the things that they chose to tell you and the things they choose not to tell you." -- Sept. 11 widow Julia Sweeney, whose husband Brian worked in the World Trade Center

"One of my greatest shames, as a journalist is that I still don't know who killed Jack Kennedy." -- Hunter S. Thompson Last January, Mike Ward compared the post-9/11 conspiracy frenzy to what occurred in the aftermath of JFK’s murder. "Angry speculation -- focused mainly on government dirty dealings, ulterior motives, and potential complicity in the attacks -- has risen to a clamor that easily rivals what followed the Kennedy assassination,"

Inconsistencies in the official story always take their toll, particularly when there's a whiff of a cover-up. And certainly, news that the White House will edit sensitive documents before handing them over to the independent commission investigating Sept. 11 makes matters murkier. "The White House gets to cherry-pick how much access the nation's commission looking into 9/11 gets to crucial documents. I'm ready to vote for subpoenas right now," former Senator Max Cleland told CNN, evoking Warren Commission suspicion deja vu.

While it's not surprising, as a New York Times/CBS poll revealed, that 77 percent of Americans reject the Warren Commission's findings, it seems that several government officials did, too. Richard Nixon, for example, said that the Warren Commission was "the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated," while Bill Clinton reportedly asked Webster Hubble to find answers to two questions: "One, who killed JFK? And, two, are there UFOs?"

Bill Maher reflected what seems to be prevailing attitude towards JFK and Sept. 11 theories. Uttering a confounded "wow" after Chris Matthews admitted, "I believe in the single bullet theory," Maher nevertheless balked when an audience member suggested that Bush might have purposely dropped the ball on 9/11. Though the press is meant to be a watchdog for "we the people," since 9/11, it's been clearly complicit in spreading governmental whoppers about everything from WMD to Jessica Lynch. At times, it spoon fed us doozies (remember the one about the hijacker’s passport surviving the fiery crash into the World Trade Center?), while often, it was merely guilty of sins of omission. 'I'm very disappointed in the press," 9/11 widow Kristin Breitweiser told Salon.com. 'I've been scheduled to go on 'Meet the Press' and 'Hardball' so many times and I'm always canceled. Frankly I'd like nothing better than to go head to head with Dick Cheney on 'Meet the Press.' Because somebody needs to ask the questions and I don't understand why nobody is."

This unholy alliance between the media and the government was intact after the JFK assassination, too. Bertrand Russell's 1964 essay, "16 Questions on the Assassination," for example, charged that the American media blindly propagated "blatant fabrications" and largely ignored "world-wide disbelief" in official US government claims. [liNK]

A 1992 Village Voice article entitled "JFK: How the Media Assassinated the Real Story" further chronicled government’s sins and the media’s complicity. In a move that rivals the Bush administration’s manipulation of WMD intelligence, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach determined what the Warren Commission's findings should be a year before the commission reached them. "We need something to head off public speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort." Katzenbach wrote in a 1963 memo.

Chronicling ploys to achieve this end, the Voice outlined tactics that are startlingly familiar to the post-9/11 propaganda employed today. "[T]he working press was a lobster in a trap," Bill Moyers admitted. "Back then, what government said was the news." While this phenomenon was recently witnessed whenever anyone like Scott Ritter disputed the official story (Ritter was accused, as Paul Zahn put it, "of drinking Saddam Hussein's Kool-Aid"), such naivete was more forgivable during the pre-Watergate era. Because of this, Johnny Carson's reaction to Jim Garrison's Tonight Show appearancewas hardly out of bounds. "The function of the Warren Commission was to make the American people feel that the [JFK assassination] had been looked into so that there would be no further inquiries," Garrison told an incredulous Carson.

"I just can't understand how you think that these men think they can get away with it or for what reason they would do it," Carson later responded..

The King of the Nights darkest hourJohnny Carson and the Kennedy assassinationBy Larry Chin

January 28, 2005 Even in glints of light and joy, there is the darkness of unacknowledged realities and suppressed nightmare.

As America mourns the death of late night TV icon Johnny Carson, fondly reminiscing over decades of gags and laughs, few bother recalling the single most telling "Carson moment" there ever was.

On January 31, 1968, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison appeared on the Tonight Show to discuss his investigation into US government involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.http://www.prouty.org/garrison/carson1.ram

http://www.prouty.org/garrison/carson2.ramOver the course of 90 minutes, the smiles and yucks went silent. Carson, Americas chuckling nighttime buddy, everybodys friend, was the assassin. He badgered, belittled, and mocked Garrison, repeatedly interrupting Garrison as he made an impassioned plea to the American people to question the official story of the JFK assassination. When Garrison attempted to show the photograph of the infamous "Three Tramps" (still unidentified mystery men who were arrested behind the Grassy Knoll and marched through Dealey Plaza, likely members of the assassination team), Carson made sure America would not see it. He yanked Garrisons arm aside, and cut the cameras. Garrison later mused:

"Why had I been debriefed in advance so that Carson could be apprised of my likely answers? Why had Carson pulled my arm away so that the photographs were out of camera range? And why had the director and the control room switched the camera so that the photographs could not be seen? The only reasonable, realistic explanation, I found myself concluding, was control.

"Some long-cherished illusions of mine about the great free press in our country underwent a painful reappraisal during this period. The restraint and respect for justice one might expect from the press . . . did not exist".

"The function of the Warren Commission was to make the American people feel that the [JFK assassination] had been looked into so that there would be no further inquiries," Garrison told an incredulous Carson. "I just can't understand how you think that these men think they can get away with it or for what reason they would do it," Carson later responded.

By 9:00 the next morning, Garrison had received more than 2,000 telegrams from district attorneys across America, who felt that Carson's "nervous antagonism," was a sign that Garrison was onto something.

Feeling the need to apologize for Carson's demeanor (which was nevertheless polite and jovial by today's shout-fest standards), NBC sent out thousands of form letters saying, "The Johnny seen on TV that night was not the Johnny we all know and love. He had to play the devil's advocate, because that makes for a better program."

Carson was furious about NBCs letter, and promised never to allow Garrison on his program again.

It is no surprise that today, as mainstream corporate media is flooded with "happy" Johnny Carson memories and magnificent tomes about how the charming Carson "epitomized the goodness of middle America", the Garrison interviewthe one glaring moment that exposed Carson as a peevish, patronizing, gatekeeping servant of larger forces continues to be studiously avoided.Times, and the historical facts, have fully vindicated the late Garrison. Oliver Stone's film JFK, which included an amusing version of the Carson interview (Stone depicted his fictional Garrison protagonist being badgered by an obnoxious talk show host named "Johnny Johnson," played by John Laroquette.)

Here we find something to truly mourn: Johnny Carson, on that night in 1968, had the power to change the world. He chose to use that power to destroy a courageous whistleblower, kill truth, and keep America naïve and stupid.

As one television critic wrote of Carson, "he rode his droll detachment and bemused self-effacement through wars and assassinations, riots and Watergate". But Carson, like many other powerful public figures and Hollywood celebrities, did little to address these serious events, except to provide water cooler humor and lampoons (ultimately giving birth to brain-addling sound-bite entertainment politics, epitomized by Jon Stewart, Jay Lenos Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, etc.), and worse. There's Johnny.

As far back as the 1970s, during a turf battle between the C.I.A.'s William Colby and JamesJesusAngleton, a great deal of evidence attesting to the existence of this covert infrastructure was partially unveiled during a number of congressional investigations. Officially, we learned of a covert project to infiltrate the American media with C.I.A. assets, code-named Project Mockingbird. In Rolling Stone magazine, one of the poster boys of "mainstream" investigative journalism, Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame), estimated that there were as many as 500 journalists in the United States on the C.I.A. payroll. Moreover, former C.I.A. Director William Colby had gone on record as revealing, "The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any major significance in the major media." Congressional House investigator Gaeton Fonzi has gone on record as demonstrating how the political and covert structure has operated to obstruct and obscure certain investigations when they had threatened to expose politically unpleasant facts. Director Colby's good friend, former Senator John De Camp —who believes that Colby was later murdered—has documented cover-ups involving child prostitute rings, many of which have been used to compromise various political figures and expose them to bribery. Put simply, a surprisingly large number of "mainstream" sources have attested to aspects of what we can reasonably conjecture as a widespread covert infrastructure of control and information. As I have conjectured elsewhere in this paper, we can see how certain corrupt networks like BCCI have served as the model for taking this infrastructure global.

Further, we have seen how the Official 9/11 Legend has been overlain with a number of equally plausible cover stories and counter-legends, involving various neocons, Saudis, Pakistanis, Israelis, or even Iraqis. Again, we have seen a precedent for this type of information campaign, as it has heretofore most successfully been used in obfuscating the facts behind the J.F.K. investigation. Indeed, it is as if the J.F.K. Assassination Legend has served as the textbook model for framing the 9/11 Legend and its offshoots. As with the 9/11 Legend, the J.F.K. Assassination Legend also had its various equally plausible offshoots, each with their own proponents.

Thus, while most of the mainstream media—and, most famously, Gerald Posner, who authored Case Closed—have mostly ignored the last official congressional investigation in 1979, which deemed the assassination a "probable conspiracy," figures as high as Lyndon Johnson had voiced suspicions of a "foreign" conspiracy, while C.I.A. bigwig James Angleton had mischievously pushed a Soviet conspiracy. Others, like House Chief Counsel Robert Blakey, have pushed a mob conspiracy, while still others have attempted to build a case implicating pro-Castro Cubans, anti-Castro Cubans, right-wing John Birchers (the forerunners of the recent militia threat), or Texas oil barons. Certainly, evidence can be marshaled to show each and every one of these elements percolating along the edges of the "Official" lone-gunman theory. But my main point is that, like the Official 9/11 Legend, these counter-legends exist—and indeed were built in—so as to furnish a number of false leads, thereby obscuring the most essential fact that a long-standing covert infrastructure has stage-managed both the crimes and the cover-ups, while parceling out the information to various witting—and unwitting—operatives. It is the classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees.

As for the existence of this infrastructure, it, too, has been obscured by various false leads and counter-legends—most perniciously, through super-natural, extra-terrestrial, or anti-Semitic theories, all of which share in common a tendency to discredit mainstream discussion of elite covert networks. Whether these theories come by way of long-exposed hoaxes like The Report From Iron Mountain or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; whether the U.F.O. tales are stoked by individual military/intelligence disinformation operatives unveiling "secret" groups like MJ-12; or whether we get a "unified field theory" of all these theories by way of authors like David Icke (who claims to have psychically "channeled" the revelation that our world leaders are, in truth, reptilian shape-shifters)—the main effect, if not intent, is to distract truly interested observers from the more dry (and potentially more damaging) writings of researchers like Peter Dale Scott, Greg Palast, LisaPease, Donald Gibson, John De Camp, and others who have credibly documented real evidence of political and corporate corruption..

Was JFK killed because of his interest in aliens? Secret memo shows president demanded UFO files 10 days before deathBy Daily Mail ReporterLast updated at 8:21 AM on 19th April 2011Released: Letter from JFK to CIA director asking for access to UFO files, which has been released to an author under the Freedom of Information Act...

Wednesday, April 20, 2011TemplateIt's been fifty years since the Bay of Pigs invasion. From "A Crime So Immense" by James K. Galbraith (hard to find, but archived in pdf form here):

One of the great travesties of the Cold War surfaced on April 29, when the Washington Post reported the declassification in full of General Maxwell Taylor’s June, 1961 special report on the Bay of Pigs invasion. Partial versions of this document have been available for decades. But only now did its darkest secret spill.

Here is what Taylor reported to Kennedy. The Russians knew the date of the invasion. (Therefore, Castro also knew.) The CIA, headed by Allen Dulles, knew that the Russians knew. (Therefore, they knew the invasion would fail.) The leak did not come from the invasion force; it had happened before the Cuban exiles were themselves briefed on the date. Kennedy was not informed. Nor, of course, were the exiles. And knowing all this, Dulles ordered the operation forward.

Was this incompetence? I think not. The evidence points, rather, to treachery.

With the Cuban brigade trapped on the beachhead, Dulles’s deputies demanded that Kennedy agree to a direct U.S. military intervention. In the standard history, this was a call for air bombardment to take down Castro’s Air Force: Kennedy had canceled a strike just before the brigade went in, but Navy jets were gunning their engines on aircraft carriers nearby. The histories don’t tend to mention something else: there were landing craft full of Marines offshore, waiting for the order to go in. (How do I know? I know someone who was on one.)

Had Kennedy caved to the CIA at that moment, then several boatloads of U.S. Marines would have joined the doomed brigade ashore. Later, the survivors would have been paraded through Havana, alongside the captured exiles, on their way to prison. There would have been an uproar, here in the United States, far greater than actually occurred. In all likelihood, we would then have committed ourselves to the vast proposition of a full-scale invasion.

And, that, it would seem, was the plan.

Kennedy refused the bait. Later, armed with Taylor’s report and its radioactive accusation, he forced the resignation of Dulles and his top lieutenant in the Bay of Pigs matter, General Charles Cabell. But, being Kennedy, he kept his secret weapon locked up. And only now, it appears, do we know what it was.

The CIA took its revenge. Despite their own 1962 Inspector General’s report stating the contrary, high officials spread the myth that Kennedy himself was responsible for the failure of the invasion - that if only he had sent in the jets (and the Marines) the outcome would have been different. Kennedy chickened out! That became what the Miami Cubans believed, and still do believe. But in truth, the betrayal of the Cubans came from their friend and protector, Allen Dulles and his CIA. The exiles were his pawns, nothing more, in a bigger, bolder game."

Dulles set up an intentional failure, a failure largely averted by Kennedy's wisdom, with the intention of creating the propaganda basis in the United States for the much larger war he sought. Kennedy's punishment for ruining Dulles' plans was to be blamed by CIA propagandists for the smaller failure.at 4/20/2011 09:50:00 AMhttp://xymphora.blogspot.com/2011/04/template.html***Curious timing ;) of this UFO disinformation given a couple other recent stories in the news...